It's hard to confess to you that I'm happy on the farm. The Farmer and I are getting along well, and all that research about how if parents are in a happy marriage the kids are happier — well, that seems to be true for us.

So I spend my days writing career advice and reading about goats and figuring out how to make enough unleavened desserts to keep the Farmer from hating Passover. When I need a break from thinking, I plant my vegetables in perfectly straight rows and hope for no more snow.

The thing is, though, that it is not my nature to be sunny and bright.

Now there’s a study to support my instincts toward stress and anxiety. According to Leslie Martin, author of the new book, The Longevity Project, stress and anxiety that arise from working hard at something that is engaging and exciting to you is actually a more healthy way to live than in a regular state of cheerfulness.

Fortunately, I don't think other people are really looking for happiness either. For example, there is an insane cover story in Psychology Today billed as Four Secrets of Happy Families.

One overachiever NYC family in the article has a daughter so obsessed with gymnastics that she practices every day after school while her mom drives to New Haven each week to teach at Yale. Seriously, this is a happy family? I don't think so. I think this is a family full of people who are engaged and passionate about their own stuff. There are scheduling conflicts all week. Family dinners once a week are an accomplishment.

The thing is that I don’t think it matters. As a society, we are not actually all that interested in happiness. If we were, people would stop relocating for jobs, people would stop eating french fries, and people would stop scheduling their kids for activities that happen close to dinnertime. If anything, I think people are focused on hiding the fact that they desperately want more money and more passion in their lives even though it’s not fashionable to admit it.

And all the research about how money doesn't buy happiness: I think get it, but we are unable to act on the news because we are programmed to want THINGS and money buys things. If we were satisfied with what we had, in cavemen times, we’d die as soon as there was a food shortage. Cavepeople always needed to feel like they needed more more more no matter how much they had in order to survive dry spells. So we can intellectually know that money doesn’t make us happier, but it doesn’t change our DNA. Embedded in our DNA is the sense that we always need to earn 15% more than we are currently earning.

So here's the research: You earn 15% more and then you hang out with people a little richer, and then you don't feel as rich because rich is relative, and then you get that semi-rational urge to earn more money again. We can't help it.

This conundrum reminds me of how we know that hot women are not better in bed, confident women are better in bed. But it doesn’t stop men who are looking for a one-night stand to try hardest for the hottest girl.

So you might wonder, are you really happy and you just don't know it? The answer is no. And that's good news. Because look, the Longevity Project says you'd be closer to dead if you were closer to happy.

I am not sure why we are even talking about happiness when Sonia Lyubomirsky shows that 2/3 of our happiness level is predetermined by our genes. If you are an optimist you are more happy, if you are a pessimist you are less happy. It’s a spectrum. You can work hard to change that last third, but instead, why not work hard to find what you are passionate about?

Which is why I don't feel settled on the farm. I keep looking around for the next thing I'm going to do that's going to disrupt things. I'm passionate about disruptions, because when you find a new way to think about something you thought was true, that's disruptive and interesting.

Like, I'm thinking maybe it won't be so bad if my goats eat my vegetables, because then I'll have an interesting problem to solve. I read a blog that said I can keep goats from eating something by spraying their pee on it. The idea of spraying my spinach with goat pee does not make me happy, but that it might work is fascinating to me.

Comments (77)

Haven’t read all your posts, especially the personal ones, but they’ve all been pretty interesting. Seeing how many people absolutely blast you for bringing your personal life onto the internet or having an opinion has honestly scared me away from the idea of starting a blog but I suppose it’s the nature of the business and I’m very impressed with your honesty.

Regarding the post, I think what you’re telling us, and forgive me for oversimplifying, is that being happy (or content maybe the way you would look at it) means that you’re never looking for improvement. I remember reading an article a long time ago about how “negative” emotions are actually good for you in small doses. For example, being a little jealous of a partner’s co-worker could possibly inspire you to make a bit of extra effort to make your partner more comfortable at home. Too much jealousy would drive your partner away. A little greed makes you work harder for what you want. A lot makes you lose focus of the things you really want.

The tone of your post indicated to me that you’re afraid that being too happy will knock out the system you’ve put in place for motivating yourself. You would be right, I suppose, that being too happy (sorry, content) is bad. But the same applies for being unhappy. I would say that you should enjoy being happy with farmer man. Just be more aware of the emotions that arise from this union and how you can take advantage of them. Not all of them will be negative. There’s no need to be scared of them changing you either as that’s a part of growing. You’ll still be just as smart and entertaining in your posts I imagine, just with a different perspective.

Another thing I will mention is your focus on money making us happier. I think the fact that money buys us freedom is the important thing to focus on rather than the money itself. What do you do with that freedom? Why does freedom make you feel good? Well, that’s more of a rhetorical question I suppose. Perhaps the cave man collected more food simply because he would feel secure in the mind knowing his family won’t go hungry. And perhaps saving his family from certain famine would fulfill a sense of purpose within himself. Perhaps that’s all the cave man thought about rather than how important it was to collect more food than his neighbours so he could see them starve and marvel at his own success. Though I’ll be honest, I never really studied cave men in that much detail.

Since I probably won’t be leaving any more comments, I hope you don’t mind if I add a little more to this already bloated comment to say a few words regarding your site in general.

Your advice on blogs has helped me a lot to refocus my writing, so thank you. I also enjoy your personal blogs. Some people have been complaining about you bringing irrelevant personal garbage onto a career focused website. I think that you’ve grown and found that rules are subjective. I, for example, love to know there’s a real person behind the writing and to know who’s giving me the advice. Others might only care about the quality of the writing and whether it raises good points. I have to admit you are probably the most bizarre person I’ve read about but then I’ve never encountered someone who’s so open and honest with their life. If it screws up work opportunities, they’re most likely work opportunities you wouldn’t want to take. Regardless, you’re very brave and I wish you the best.

Perhaps we are simply arguing semantics. We are wired to pursue good feelings and avoid negative feelings. “Happy” is a catch all term that one might argue is the same feeling as “passion”. Money is not the secret to happiness and our blind pursuit of it and the feeling of “never enough” has more to do with the economic stratification of our society. Cultures that are all poor or all rich, statistically speaking test higher in the life satisfaction department. And lastly, while hot looking chicks might not be the best in the sack, it's not exactly painful either, or so I’ve heard.

Money, after a point, don’t bring any more happiness. But for dirt-poor, money goes a long way in bringing happiness. I guess there were a research up there on this.

And, your advice on ‘why change the last third, instead find something you are passionate about’ seems like a false dichotomy. Engaging something where you can achieve flow is playing beyond the set point of happiness.

There’s unhappy stressed and anxious and there’s happy stressed and anxious. One is like walking around in molasses with lead, the other is exciting and sunshiney and occasionally intensely scary but in a fleeting optimistic kind of way.

I know which I like best and I know which one characterises times when I’m doing sommething good for me. Unhappiness is most definitely not good for me.

this is interesting. my life is extremely similar to yours — i moved to the country seven years ago. what i’ve found is that making myself happy in all those domestic ways — home, marriage, children, pets, food, garden, exercise — has allowed me to concentrate all my ADD-fueled angst on work. and i love it that way. i feel like instead of gnawing all day on those other things, solving them by squaring them away takes them off the table. and now i can gnaw on my career instead. it’s a good balance.

I think this is almost like saying you can’t have good without evil. It’s true, you can’t really have happiness without some unrest. How could we even desire to achieve happiness, were it not for the fact that we will always (even the most optimistic person) experience some amount of discontent? I agree with this point.

However, if everyone were not looking for happiness (as a result of experiencing their unhappiness) there would be no need for all the research and books written about happiness. I believe this point, respectfully, could not possibly be true. Nor do a believe we could make a definitive conclusion about this topic.

Happiness in the research is also individual, wanting more and wanting happiness could possibly be considered synonymous. For some people they may want more money or more stuff but I feel as if the innate human nature of ‘wanting more’ is actually about more experiences, better health, more time, more freedom, more love, more family time, and more satisfaction in their work. These are desires of ‘more’ that I feel are considered by the majority to be more important than money.

For those who do want more money, I believe Psychological conditioning plays the biggest role in that. Money is easy to measure, and we are conditioned to try to measure success somehow. Try measuring happiness, it can’t be done. Try measuring freedom, love, family time or satisfaction with work, it’s a lot more difficult to do, but it doesn’t mean we want it any less. We will however always try to make enough money to suite our needs, which do change.

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